


Ashes in a Supernova

by geishateahouse



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 11:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/899893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geishateahouse/pseuds/geishateahouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bones didn't take Jim on the Enterprise because it was against regulation, Jim was grounded. It was the last mistake he would ever make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes in a Supernova

“I might throw up on you.” Leonard Horatio McCoy had met James Tiberius Kirk a broken man. When he had taken a seat on that shuttle beside the young bright eyed boy who’d tilted away from him at the first scent of liquor and the crazy raise of his eyebrow, Leonard had no idea who in the world he was meeting. Love was a concept that had chewed him up and spit him out, wrenched him apart into a great many things, until the concept of wholeness was so far from his mind that he was signing up for _Starfleet_ , heading to the one place that terrified him most. 

 

“Don’t pander to me _kid_ ,” He had spat, watching those bright blue eyes, the color of Georgia skies on a day when your wife wasn’t throwing your clothing at you as she pushed you out the door Bones had thought vaguely, widen. “-- when your eyeballs are bleeding. Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.” Bones yanked out a flask, unscrewing the cap. Jocelyn had always hated his ranting, and his drinking.

 

“Well, I hate to break this to you, but Starfleet operates in space.” Leonard’s eyes had finally taken in the fact that it looked like this kid had been through the ringer. Prize fighter he was not, not with the caked blood under his nose and the blossoming bruises along the line of his jaw, he didn’t come to realize until later that he had noticed the injuries second. Normally all he saw was injuries, ways to fix to heal, but he had been too taken with the _eyes._

 

“Yeah. Well, I got no where else to go, the ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce. All I got left is my bones.”

 

Bones. Jim had latched onto that word. Leonard passed his flask to the kid beside him, and for the rest of his life, Leonard had a new name.

 

\--

 

Bones was a licensed doctor, medical personnel, if he wanted he could have had cushier accommodations. An apartment with an actual living room, a bedroom that he could spread his arms out wide and not touch both walls, a bed that was larger than a hospital cot. However Leonard’s ex-wife appeared to have taken his spine too, and he found Jim wheedling him into agreeing to room together.

 

Jim had shucked his leather jacket on the bed, grinning brightly and turning around to face Bones who stood staring at his minuscule bed on the right hand side of the room. His bed with Jocelyn had been a king and now there was this.

 

“Come on, Bones, it isn’t so bad.”

 

“Fuck you it isn’t so bad, dammit man this is barely human sized.” Bones spat, but yanked off his own jacket all the same, glancing at the regulation dresser that he had been assured held plenty of regulation uniforms. 

 

Jim had just laughed, striding across the room and clapping Bones on both shoulders, steering  him away from the bed. “Let’s go to Mess, get you some food, grumpy.”

 

\--

 

It had taken Bones a few days to come to terms with the fact that it didn’t matter what he had with Jocelyn, that was all _gone_. From then on he was more thankful for what he did have, even thankful for Jim’s snoring across the room.

 

\--

 

If you asked him for the exact day Leonard had started falling for James Tiberius Kirk, he might be able to point in a few vague directions, but nothing stable. Maybe it was the time that Jim brought him a plate of hot food and took away his books after his 13 hour practical midterm, their first year. Maybe it was the first night that Jim came home from a bar, where he’d gone instead of study for an exam the next day, with blood streaming from his nose and a lump on his head that could rival a mountain. Maybe it was the first time Jim crawled into his bed late one night, when even Leonard’s bones hurt from sleep deprivation, and the weight of another beside him in the tiny bed had felt so _good_.

 

All he could say for certain was that Jim’s bed started to go untouched more often than not, Jim stopped bringing random girls home, and Bones started to feel like a person again sometime near the end of year one.

 

Sometime in the beginning of year two, when they had moved into the proper accommodations befitting Leonard’s medical proficiency, Bones had found himself sitting against the headboard, Jim pillowed on his chest. Finally telling someone the story of his and Jocelyn’s disintegration had been therapeutic, Jim had just listened and never judged. Somewhere around then, Bones had taken to calling Jim ‘ _darlin’_ in the privacy of their apartments, and sometime around then, Jim had whispered that Bones was _everything_ in the darkness.

 

\--

 

Jim was fire, strength, a warrior born to lead. Sometimes it frightened Bones, the universal draw of Jim T. Kirk, but the strength he had he _spread_. Jim did not keep to himself in any sense, he infected those around him with his brilliance.

 

The first exercise in space should have been hell on him. Should have been. For a man who had been so paralyzed by the idea of space before, Bones’ hands remained calm, his heart rate steady with the sense of those Georgia-sky eyes on him.

 

Bones had passed with flying colors, and Jim had driven them to rocky cliffs overlooking the ocean and the stars. For once, slumped against Jim comfortably, one of the bottles of Romulan ale that Jim had packed for them in hand, Bones hadn’t minded looking up at the constellations and letting Jim tell him about what waited for them out there.

 

\--

 

It took a few minutes for the call to stabilize, the hologram flickering, to be expected with the distance between them. Jim was sitting on the bed in that shitty apartment they had gotten earlier in the year just off the Academy’s campus, looking the perfect picture of a child in time out. Bones couldn’t help but to spare a moment to consider that that was what Jim _was._

 

“Bones, what’re you--”

 

Bones held up a hand to silence Jim, shaking his head. “Vulcan’s _gone_ , Jim.” 

 

Jim’s face held all the emotion that Bones could never express himself. He was a _doctor_ , it was his job to remain calm and impassive in the face of the most stressful situations, dammit. Even now he couldn’t lose his head, there were nurses, other doctors that had huddled in the central med bay and they all needed a pillar of strength.

 

“But, how, what happened?”

 

“It’s a Romulan mining ship, Jim. A Romulan named Nero who’s convinced that the pointy eared asshole who brought you up to the council did something to Romulus destroyed Vulcan with a drill.”

 

“But, Romulus is fine, it’s.. Bones.. _Bones_.” There was a crack in Jim’s voice that Leonard didn’t want to hear.

 

“There was.. it was a lightning storm in space,” The words hit home with Jim just like Bones had known they would. “Pike didn’t realize in time. The rest of the fleet is gone, destroyed. The _Farragut,_ the _Newton_ , the _Antares,_ all of them. We’ve sent messages to Command, to the rest of the fleet, but it’s too late.”

 

“Bones why--”

 

“I don’t want you to see this, darlin’.” His voice dropped low, Georgia twang heavy in the words that tasted so awful in his mouth. Jim’s mouth was working but no sound was coming out, and Bones almost could have almost sworn those blue eyes got a little brighter, but the image was shaky.

 

“ _Leonard_..” Jim had scooted closer, closer and closer until his face filled up most of the frame, as if he could phase himself through the image to get to Bones, to find himself on the _Enterprise_ with the same minutes as the rest of the crew.

 

“Come on, Jim, can’t start using my real name now. Listen, darlin’,” A ship-wide transmission was coming from the Romulan ship, but Bones blocked it on the terminal he was using, ignoring the sounds of it from behind him, the triumph in Nero’s voice alone was enough to turn his gut. “I just. I needed to say--” Say what, how could he even begin to describe how Jim had glued all of his pieces back together in a way that he had never imagined could happen again.

 

“I love you, Jim.”

 

“Leo, no, what’s happening, Bones _,_ why are you saying this, what--”

 

“Goodbye, kid.” Leonard reached up to end the transmission, watching Jim’s distraught image flicker and disappear, swallowing down the lump in his throat.

 

Nero’s transmission had already cut out, when exactly Leonard couldn’t say.

 

Leonard closed his eyes, breathing deeply. If he was honest with himself he was tired, he’d lived a good handful of years, seen a lot of things. He’d gotten his medical degree after long hard time in school, he’d married and divorced. He’d had a daughter for christssake, who he hadn’t seen in years -- he’d made his mistakes, and he’d made it into space. 

 

Yet, there was a lingering whisper in his brain, a reminder that for the past three years he’d found something to live for, something with Georgia-sky eyes.

 

Bones opened his eyes, looking to his right out the window onto star-filled space, the debris from Starfleet ships invisible to him. “The stars are yours to conquer, darlin’.”

 

\--

 

James Tiberius Kirk lost Leonard Horatio McCoy and became a broken man. He became a decorated captain, brought the war-criminal Nero to justice for the lives he had taken, the planet he had destroyed, and helped to rebuild both Vulcan and Starfleet.

 

However he never left Earth without saying goodbye to the cold marble memorial that held Bones’ name and nothing else, whispering up to the constellations that held the dust of his universe.


End file.
